South Africa continues its slide. Last year Africa’s largest economy saw its sovereign debt rating downgraded by Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s after widespread mining strikes undermined investor confidence. Yesterday Fitch followed suit, following a new outbreak of strikes by grape farmers. South Africa’s economy has now received a vote of no confidence from all three major […]

Is the momentum for new action on gun control slowly leaking away? That seems to be the message of this New York Times piece on Vice President Biden’s task force on gun control, which has tempered its expectation of a renewal of an assault weapon ban as Washington’s gun rights lobby flexes its muscle: [T]he White House has […]

The international intervention in Mali has finally begun: French troops are on the ground and warplanes in the sky, helping Malian soldiers fight Islamist militants who have taken over the northern part of the country. Just in the past few days the (loosely but dangerously) al Qaeda-linked militants advanced south toward the capital, panicking residents […]

Healthcare policy experts have long predicted that electronic medical records would allow us to streamline and modernize much of our healthcare system. But despite some encouraging signs, many of the promised benefits of the new technology have yet to materialize: The conversion to electronic health records has failed so far to produce the hoped-for savings in […]

As Americans who were alive during the Carter administration know all too well, stagflation—low growth mixed with inflation—is something you don’t want. Unfortunately, Brazil could be headed in that direction, according to the FT. Last year, inflation there reached 5.84 percent, well above the central bank’s target of 4.5 percent. That figure, combined with disappointing economic […]

Greece just can’t get out of its own way. Acting under a law enforcement strategy meant to protect the economy from foreign workers, police detained and beat a Korean tourist whom they mistook for an illegal immigrant. This story echoes a similar one from last year, in which police beat an African American tourist until […]

You know that long-held conventional wisdom that the human population will grow exponentially, wreaking havoc on the planet and depleting its resources? According to a recent report, it’s bunk. Demographers are predicting that global population will soon taper and eventually decline. Slate has the story: It took humankind 13 years to add its 7 billionth. That’s […]

Decades of steady tuition increases may finally be coming to an end at American universities: The Wall Street Journal reports that a number of schools are beginning to cut back on tuition increases in response to waning student demand. But these cuts are beginning to take a toll on revenue.According to a recent survey by Moody’s, […]

The news out of Pakistan seems to get bloodier by the day. Taliban and Baluchi separatists targeted Shia Muslims in the lawless province of Baluchistan, taking 120 lives in a pair of bombing attacks. The FT: A senior police officer said from Quetta that the sophistication of the attacks was “unbelievable”. In the first of […]

Last January plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline were halted by the Obama administration; this January it’s Canadian politics that is blocking a new pipeline. Plans to build the Northern Gateway pipeline, a Keystone alternative that would bring Canada’s vast reserves of crude from its Albertan oil sands to the Pacific Ocean, are buckling under […]